Light and dark

[35]

AS A laborer in a smock and crew cut was leaving, a diminutive man in an Inverness coat came in and took a seat a little apart from them. Without removing his cap, the peak low on his brow, he surveyed the room once carefully and reached inside his coat. Removing a small, thin notebook, he opened it and stared intently at the page, reading or lost in thought. He made no move to take off his worn coat, and the cap remained on his head. But the notebook did not remain open long: replacing it carefully inside his coat, he peered surreptitiously at the faces of the other customers, this time sipping from his cup of sake. From time to time, extending one hand from the folds of his shabby coat, he stroked his wispy mustache.

Tsuda and Kobayashi had been observing the stranger for a while without drawing attention to themselves when abruptly their eyes met his and they turned sharply around to face each other. Kobayashi leaned forward slightly.

“You get it?”

Tsuda maintained his unbending posture; his tone suggested the question wasn’t worthy of a reply.

“Get what?”

Kobayashi lowered his voice further.

“That fellow is a detective.”

Tsuda did not reply. A stronger drinker than his companion, he was unruffled. He drained the cup in front of him in silence. Kobayashi filled it to the brim at once.

“See the look in those eyes?”

With a faint smile, Tsuda spoke at last.

“If you keep going out of your way to bad-mouth the upper class, you’ll get yourself mistaken for a socialist.”

“A socialist!”

Kobayashi lifted his voice on purpose and glanced pointedly at the man in the Inverness.

“Don’t make me laugh. I may not be much, but I support the good citizens of the working class. Compared with me, elitists like you who pretend that things are as they should be are the bad guys. So which of us deserves to be hauled away by the police — think about it!”

The man in the cap was looking at his lap in silence, obliging Kobayashi to rail at Tsuda.

“Maybe it’s never occurred to you to treat laborers and ditch-diggers like this as human beings.”

Kobayashi paused and glanced around him, but unfortunately no ditch-diggers or laborers were in evidence. Supremely unconcerned, he continued his tirade:

“Yet they’re possessed by nature of a sublime humanity people like you and that detective can’t even imagine. It’s just that the beauty of their humanity is covered in the grime of poverty and tribulation. In other words, they’re soiled because they’re not able to bathe. So have some respect for them.”

Kobayashi seemed in his vehemence to be defending himself more than the poverty-stricken. Tsuda was, however, cautious of engaging energetically lest his own stance be compromised, and so he avoided an argument. But Kobayashi pursued him.

“You’re silent, but I know you don’t believe what I say. I can see it plainly in your face. Well, let me explain — you must have read the Russian novelists?”

Tsuda, who hadn’t, not one, said nothing.

“Anyone who has read Dostoevsky in particular will know this: no matter how lowly a man is, or how uneducated, there are times when sentiments so pure and genuine and entirely undaunted they make you want to weep with gratitude will usher forth from him like a crystal spring. You think that’s fiction?”

“I haven’t read Dostoevsky, so I wouldn’t know.”

“If you ask Fujii sensei, he’ll tell you it’s a lie. He’ll say it’s merely a literary device imitated by lots of writers who came after Dostoevsky because he was so popular, a stratagem for getting readers worked up sentimentally by serving them sublime feelings in a vulgar bowl. I don’t agree. It makes me mad when I hear Sensei talk that way. Sensei doesn’t understand Dostoevsky. No matter how old he gets, he’ll never be any wiser about books. I may be young but—”

Kobayashi had gradually worked himself up. Finally, looking as though he were unbearably moved, he spilled tears on the tablecloth.